Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 622 - 159: The Final Battle

Lin Guanglai's pitch was quick; almost as soon as the umpire announced the start of the game, he initiated his throwing motion. With a fierce swing of his arm, the white ball zipped out of his fingertips, aggressively heading towards Shohei Ohtani's high inside corner.

Even after playing an entire game as a batter, Lin Guanglai's stamina was still quite robust at this moment, which allowed him to consistently release fastballs exceeding 160 km/h even in the later stages of the game.

Especially now, as the closing pitcher, Lin Guanglai didn't need to worry about conserving energy like when he was a starter; with full power, every pitch he threw posed a significant threat to the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters' batters.

Just like this high inside fastball now, intentionally controlled to drill into Shohei Ohtani's inside corner with strong tail speed, the pitch's path was nearly touching his body, leaving the batter hardly any room to maneuver—after deliberating for a while, Shohei Ohtani finally chose to send the ball behind home plate.

The umpire, without hesitation, immediately signaled that it was a strike.

"Strike!" Seeing this scene, Kaji Yagyu in the studio shouted out excitedly and then threw the topic at Shiroyama Kenshi beside him, "Shiroyama-san, as a former Japan's Number One catcher, what do you think of a pitcher like Lin Guanglai?"

Shiroyama Kenshi, being cued, smiled and immediately praised, "Now I just regret that I was born too early and didn't get the chance to be teammates with Lin—such pitchers who can send the ball wherever the catcher calls for are virtually flawless in both speed and power; even in the Major League, there are very few like him."

"With such a pitcher, as long as the catcher can first nab a strike through pitch calling, the rest of the job doesn't even require much thought..." Contemplating this, Shiroyama Kenshi chuckled, "If I were in Takeshima Shinya's catcher position, I think my collaboration with Lin would eliminate Ohtani in four pitches or less."

As he finished talking, this Japanese legendary player also shook his head, "Ohtani is actually a very outstanding young player, even among this generation's players he stands out; but unfortunately, he encountered a monstrously talented player in his best year, sometimes such things indeed make one feel helpless."

The situation on the field was just as Shiroyama Kenshi expected: throughout this past season, countless top batters in Nippon Professional Baseball have demonstrated through repeated strikeouts the power Lin Guanglai possesses once he manages to get a strike.

Despite Shohei Ohtani's talent and skill gradually coming to the fore, he still finds himself overmatched against Lin Guanglai, who has reigned over Nippon Professional Baseball for three seasons, and can manage only a few symbolic pitches more before reaching the limits of his current ability.

After four pitches, accompanied by the trajectory of the baseball rapidly lowering into home plate, Shohei Ohtani, who couldn't retract his bat in time, was also struck out by this precision forkball.

After this strikeout, even Shohei Ohtani, who is adept at controlling his emotions, couldn't help but lose his composure. Captured by the camera, he clearly wasn't satisfied with his performance at this bat, and quickly lowered his head as he walked back to the player area and forcefully pounded the wall of the bench to vent his feelings.

As the lead batter in the crucial moment when his team needed him most, failing to stand up was something a player like him, with a strong sense of competitiveness, could not accept.

With this impressive strikeout, the Yahoo Dome, which had fallen into brief silence at the start of the ninth inning, exploded into activity once again:

Home SoftBank fans erupted in great cheer, embracing and celebrating with their fellow supporters, unleashing all sorts of emotions; while the few Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters fans at the away game covered their faces with towels or jerseys, unable to bear watching what was about to unfold on the field.

Up until now in the series, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, with one game behind, once grabbed a match point, indeed having given their all and deservingly earning all the praises in words;

But such is the cruelty of competitive sports: a series has to end eventually, and inevitably produces a winner and a loser; from the looks of the current situation, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters are growing closer to becoming the heartbreaking losers.

Moments later—

"Swinging strikeout! Three outs, the game is over!!!" Almost at the same moment the baseball flew into Takeshima Shinya's catcher's mitt, Kaji Yagyu and Shiroyama Kenshi raised their hands and cheered loudly in the studio; simultaneously reverberating was the cheers of over forty thousand SoftBank fans in the Yahoo Dome stands.

"We won! We won! We're going to be Japan's Number One, we're going to establish the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks' V3 dynasty!"

"I knew it... I knew we could do it! Ugh... when the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters grabbed the series point, it truly startled me, I thought we were going to lose..."

"How could we lose? We'll never lose! Because we have Lin, he's the best player in all Japan, and even globally he's a top-tier star!"

"Ah... now that you mention it, thinking about how at the end of this season we'll lose Xiaoguang, it feels somewhat unwilling... Without Xiaoguang, can we continue defending our title next season?"